Transcript

Over the years satellites, weather balloons and even amateur storm chasers have helped track the direction of these deadly columns of air.

Now scientists in Oklahoma are sending drones into the skies to help follow tornados and they think it can help those who fight bushfires as well.

North America correspondent Michael Vincent reports.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Every tornado season brings new images of chaos and impending doom.

VOX POP: Oh my god, that's huge. That is huge, oh no.

VOX POP 2: That's crazy.

VOX POP 3: Oh my god.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Current warning times are about 10 minutes.

Now scientists from the University's of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, as well as National Weather Centre, are hoping the information from their drones will give residents much more time to escape.

JAMES GRIMSLEY: Alright, I'm just probably going to run them through it, so.

(Sound of drone)

MICHAEL VINCENT: The launch of an inexpensive foam plane with cameras and special sensors.

In the hanger of a dedicated drone airfield near Little Spring Oklahoma, Dr James Grimsley is overseeing the team of researchers.

JAMES GRIMSLEY: I can say that it's almost mesmerising when you see a large tornado. The amount of energy that's really, that it has and it possesses is incredible.

MICHAEL VINCENT: How do you hope drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will help better understand tornados?

JAMES GRIMSLEY: Well, UAVs help us to get into parts of the atmosphere that we really can't get into right now with manned aircraft.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Outside the hanger his colleague Dr Jamey Jacobs is trying to get a visual on today's flight test, but it's hard to make out the drone in the fog.

Dr Jacobs however is pleased because these drones need to be able to work in all weather conditions. Not only in tornadoes but also to help volunteer fire-fighters in rural Oklahoma help fight what locals call wildfires.

JAMEY JACOBS: We don't know how these vehicles will operate, how well they communicate with the ground control station, how well the pilot in command will be able to control it under all these different scenarios.

So one of the things we're studying is how the vehicles and the crew react under different conditions.

MICHAEL VINCENT: The vehicle that's in the air at the moment, it's foam; it looks like it's relatively easy to make.

JAMEY JACOBS: Yeah, you know the vehicle that we're using right now is simply off the shelf you know, so all the technology is really on the inside. It's not in the air frame to the ground control station and the autopilot on board but that's on purpose.

The idea there is try to find something that's relatively inexpensive. Most of our fire departments are volunteer. They don't have a lot of funding, they don't have money that they could spend on say $100,000 worth of equipment, so they need something relatively inexpensive but that's still going to be very robust.

MICHAEL VINCENT: The bushfire season is still months away.

The tornado season is only weeks away and Dr Grimsley and Professor Jacobs hope to get their drones in the skies as soon as they can.